Winter RantThe Weekly: 996 or AI? Pick.
First things first. Been away for a while. I have probably gone through 3 rounds of burnout this year. Those burnouts triggered an intense re-look at my life and life choices. I will speak to the burnout soon. What I can say is that while I accomplished a lot this year, I am not ending 2025 on a higher note than when I started it. Everything is dog💩.
But I am back. Back to tending the important things in life. Back to this blog and newsletter. And I am here to stay.
I have been meaning to write this come-back note for a while now. I wanted to pen a few thoughts about my burnouts. But they have been crushing difficult to talk about – even to myself. After a month of scribbling privately, I stumbled onto something that felt tangentially connected to my burnouts. So here it goes…
996 or AI? Pick.
Either AI will boost productivity like never before and cause large sections of today’s economy to go without human workers. Or, people will need to work harder then ever to keep up with the ever increasing demands of the workplace.
Which is it? Because you cannot have it both ways.
N. Murthy, founder of Infosys and guy who built a business model around necessary manual labor in computer science, recently came out and reiterated his stance on getting working-age Indians to perform 70+ hour work weeks. Some of his words,
“There is a saying in China – 9, 9, 6. You know what it means? g a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. And that is a 72-hour week.”
He’s made similar remarks going back to early 2025, 2024, and 2023. He talks about getting a life before getting work-life balance. I will say again, for a man who has exploited the need for manual labor in tech, i expect nothing less. Soon, we can expect a podcast from him, titled “996”.
But I sense a dishonesty in Murthy’s remarks.
Push for 996 vs. Push for AI
996 reeks of structure. Structure and Committees (because you need committees to enforce said structure). Hard work, especially over longer durations, is not fueled by structure; it is fueled by inspiration and creativity. Innovation certainly does not happen by committee.
If you want people to work longer hours then give them something to live up to, or look up to. Give them a problem that feeds their intellect or interest. Give them a mission. They will beg for more work. But let’s face facts, most (white-color) work is not like that. No matter how much we pretend otherwise. Most work is repetitive and boring, but necessary; which brings me to AI and automation.
Murthy is not alone on this 996 push.
And it is particularly odd to see corporate leaders begging people to work longer, in an age of AI — where most routine work should and would be automated away by now. Aside: all this begging makes them look feckless.
After praying to the 996 gods, these money-ghouls will immediately turn around and claim the powers of AI as “transformative” — Murthy has. They will claim that routine, repetitive work is/will get automated away, leaving behind only creative endeavors for human workers.
It’s a grift
These CEOs and corporate leaders do not want to pay fair wages. They ideally want an infinite source of labor for zero cost. And they want the ability right to replace any worker, at any time, with no repercussions. And i want a pony.
It is all a grift for them. Their grift is that they dangle salaries that look high to Indian workers. The salaries look high because young Indians graduating out of schools and colleges have never seen their parents make such sums of money. Give a worker 30,000 INR a month. Heck, give them 50,000 month. Push it to as high as 1,00,000 INR every month. Seems like a lot, because numerically they are higher compared to the salaries of a previous generation. Then slowly you realize that you get virtually no other benefits. You will be squeezed for all you are worth. And most of that money is going to get wiped off in rent, because you are likely living in a different city than where your parents or family are living.
I will say … these CEOs are getting creative with their grift. They are now spinning longer/harder periods of work as a selfless act of patriotism for the nation (in this case, India). It’s an idiotic thought.
First, not many are going to subscribe the kind of selfless patriotism that yields low pay rates and high degrees of stress — mental, emotional and physical. If anyone wanted to subject themselves to that kind of patriotism, they would and should join the Indian Army, where you get a meaningful set of benefits and perks, and walk away with a sense of pride and honor after possibly building a career. Second, if you have to beg and/or coerce people into working longer hours, then either you are not paying them enough or you are subjecting them to work that is inherently never interesting, or both.
Now, if we are getting rid of boring work (because AI has automated it all), it should leave the more intellectually curious work for human workers. Such engaging work should engross workers so much that they will typically just work around the clock, and keep coming back for more assignments.
Then why talk of 996?
Are we NOT getting AI to do more work in an infinitely scalable ways?
Which is it — push for AI or push for 996? It cannot be both — I did not set these rules, tech CEOs did.
It feels like part of same grift. AI feels less transformative, and more an excuse to fire workers when and how owners/leaders want. Humanity has not automated away boring office work. It has merely invented newer ways of doing the same work that requires human involvement. That human involvement just needs newer routines than known previously. Sure, the routines are changing, but they are not going away.
996 is intellectual dishonesty. Yeah, I said it.
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